STEADY Art Barrientos outclassed Australian top seed Blake Walsh 443-349 last night to capture the prestigious boys’ masters title in the 42nd Asian Youth Bowling Championships at the Blu-0 Rhythm and Bowl Center in Bangkok, Thailand.
With a small but animated Filipino gallery shouting “Laban Pilipinas!” in the background, Barrientos reserved his best for last, scoring five consecutive strikes in the seventh frame onwards to complete the rout of Walsh 237-169 in their second match for the gold.
Knowing he had the championship in the bag, he turned around and bowed to the gallery for a job well done.
The bespectacled bowler started hot in the first match of the finals with three strikes in a row to hold off the Aussie, who uses a two-handed bowling style like compatriot and former world champion Jason Belmonte, 206-180 in the first match.
Barrientos emerged as the most bemedaled athlete for the country. The 18-year-old BS Hospitality Management student from FEU-Roosevelt also won the team gold medal with Zach Sales Ramin, Dylan Custodio and Stephen Diwa last Monday, ending the country’s 41-year dry spell in the team event of the tournament.
As a result, the Philippines also took overall honors in the boys’ division.
Barrientos also became the first Filipino kegler to win a gold in the boys’ division. Biboy Rivera bagged the men’s singles plum in 1996.
Playing on lanes 21 and 22, Barrientos scored a three-bagger from the fourth to the sixth frames to beat South Korean Lee Myeongcheol 205-191in the stepladder semifinals.
Myeoncgheol, who took the No. 2 slot after shooting 3533 in the 16-game series, missed the 10-pin in the final game, enabling Barrientos to advance against the Australian No. 1 seed, who earned a bye after emerging as the topnotcher with a 3477 total.
Barrientos had an eight-game series of 1740 in the first block, highlighted by a pair of 23s7 in the fifth and eighth games on top of a 236 in the sixth, to slip into the No. 2 spot at the halfway mark of the event, just 26 pins behind pacesetting South Korean Baek Seungmin (1831) last Tuesday.
When play resumed, the bespectacled Pinoy bowler looked headed to sealing the No. 1 spot in the stepladder finals and a bye after shooting 251 in the 14th game but slumped to 193 and 181 in the last two games and slid to third with a 3447 total.
